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Evolution  Series,  No.  44  May  15,  1893 


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EVOLUTION  OF  CHARITIES 
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EVOLUTION  OF  CHARITIES 
AND  CHARITABLE 

INSTITUTIONS 


BY 

AMOS  G.  WARNER,  Ph.  D. 

PBOFKSSOR  OF  ECONOMICS  IN  LELAND  STANFORD  JUNIOR  UNIVERStlT 
hATS  SUPBIUMTKNDENT  OF  CHiJUTI£S,   WASHINGTON,  O.  C,  £TC. 


COLLATERAL  READINGS  SUGGESTED: 

■  Spencer's  Principles  of  Sociology  and  Principles  of  Ethics ;  Faw- 
cett's  Pauperism,  its  Causes  and  Remedies;  Eden's  State  of  the  Poor; 
Mrs.  Lowell's  Public  Relief  and  Private  Charity ;  Wayland's  Outdoor 
Relief  and  Tramps;  Riis's  How  the  Other  Half  Lives;  McCulloch's 
The  Tribe  of  Ishmael,  a  Story  of  Social  Degradation  (address  before 
the  National  Conference  of  Charities  and  Correction,  1888) ;  Elizabeth 
Bisland's  London  Charities,  Cosmopolitan,  July,  1891 ;  Dr.  Seaman's 
Social  Waste  of  a  Great  City,  Science,  vol.  viii,  p.  283. 


SRLF 
URL 


:/^orjrj2j2 


EVOLUTION  OF  CHARITIES  AND  CHARI- 
TABLE INSTITUTIONS. 

By  Amos  Q.  Waenee,  Ph.  D. 

How  Natueal  Selection  operates  in  Eace 
Improvement. 

Next  to  its  efficiency  as  a  means  of  race  improvement, 
the  most  striking  characteristic  of  natural  selection  is  its 
enormous  wastefulness.  Heedless  of  the  lapse  of  time,  prod- 
igal of  life  and  indifferent  to  suffering,  the  forces  of  Na- 
ture-apart-from-man  work  out  surely,  but  at  fearful  cost, 
the  differentiation  and  improvement  of  species.  A  hun- 
dred different  characteristics  may  be  essential  to  the  survival 
of  a  given  organism  under  given  conditions,  and  to  fail  in 
one  essential  is  as  surely  fatal  as  to  fail  in  all.  For  a  defect 
in  any  one  of  many  essentials  the  punishment  of  Nature  is 
death.  If  a  given  person,  fitted  in  all  other  ways  to  pro- 
mote the  advancement  of  a  race,  can  not  resist  an  attack  of 
small-pox,  that  person,  setting  aside  conscious  effort  to  pre- 
vent the  disease,  must  die,  and  so  must  perish  all  who  are 
similarly  weak  until  the  race  shall  be  made  up  of  persons 
impervious  to  this  disease.  If  a  young  man  who  is  fitted  in 
all  other  ways  for  high  success  under  the  conditions  of  mod- 
ern life  has  neglected  to  learn  to  swim,  and  then  permits 
himself  to  fall  into  deep  water.  Nature  calmly  eliminates 
him  as  one  of  the  unfit.  If  the  population  of  a  thriving 
town  is  indiscreet  enough  to  live  beneath  a  reservoir  not 
adequately  strong,  Nature  hurls  over  them  the  waters  of  a 
Conemaugh  flood,  and  all  that  quantity  of  prosperous  and 
useful  life  is  obliterated,  merely  to  give  to  other  communi- 
ties a  hint  that  they  must  employ  engineers  more  competent 
or  more  honest. 

From  the  extermination  of  young  codfish  to  the  decay 
and  disappearance  of  the  races  of  men,  nonsentient  Nature 
operates  in  the  same  successful  but  remorseless  way.  The 
wolf  that  can  not  bear  starvation,  or  the  Englishman  that 
can  not  bear  the  tropic  heat  of  India,  must  pay  the  penalty 
of  death  for  their  respective  weaknesses.    But  early  in  the  de- 


256  Evolution  of  Charities. 

velopment  of  living  beings  instincts  appear  which  tend  to 
economize  time  and  life  in  the  process  of  evolution.  One  of 
the  earliest  instincts  of  this  sort  is  that  which  prompts  ani- 
mals to  care  for  their  young.  Some  shield  is  interposed 
between  the  helpless  infants  of  the  lower  orders  and  the  re- 
morseless operations  of  nonsentient  Nature.  In  the  higher 
orders  of  life  the  sentiment  extends  beyond  the  family,  and 
an  instinctive  desire  to  preserve  the  life  of  others  defeats 
the  uneconomical  ruthlessness  of  Nature.  Thus  comes  in 
what  may  be  called  instinctive  selection  as  opposed  to  natu- 
ral selection  in  a  narrow  sense.  The  charitable  impulse, 
the  desire  to  help  the  destitute  to  prolong  life  and  make  it 
happier  and  fuller,  has,  until  recently,  been  an  instinct  only. 

The  Chaeactebistics  of  Human  Selection. 

Finally  there  has  been  introduced  an  element  which  may 
be  termed  rational  selection.  It  comes  to  be  perceived  that 
those  who,  for  some  reason,  are  not  capable  of  coping  with  the 
local  and  temporary  conditions  which  surround  them,  may 
yet  be  of  great  use  to  the  race,  if  preserved  from  Nature  or 
from  instinct  by  the  conscious  and  purposeful  intervention 
of  man.  It  thus  happens  that  we  practice  vaccination  that 
the  scourge  of  small-pox  may  not  run  its  former  course  and 
harden  the  race  only  after  it  has  destroyed  the  larger  part 
of  it.  We  see,  or  think  we  see,  that  the  time  of  the  race 
can  be  better  employed  than  in  becoming  inured  to  small- 
pox, and  we  modify  the  process  of  natural  selection  in  order 
that  the  process  of  evolution  may  take  a  short  cut  toward 
its  final  goal.  For  similar  reasons,  if  it  be  possible,  we  throw 
a  life-preserver  to  a  drowning  man  that  all  the  energy  and 
time  that  had  been  spent  in  rearing  him  may  not  be  wasted 
merely  because  he  did  not  know  how  to  swim.  We  send  re- 
lief to  Johnstown  in  order  that  cold  and  famine  may  not 
supplement  the  devastation  of  the  flood.  We  hold  it  to  be 
our  business  so  to  modify  conditions  as  to  make  certain  the 
survival  of  those  who  are  fit  from  the  standpoint  of  race 
improvement.  As  Professor  Ward  puts  it,  "the  environ- 
ment transforms  the  animal,  while  man  transforms  the  en- 
vironment." 

"  So  we,  considering  everywhere 

Great  Nature's  purpose  in  her  deeds, 
And  finding  that  of  fifty  seeds 
She  often  brings  but  one  to  bear  " — 


Evolution  of  Charities.  257 

considering  these  things,  I  say,  we  study  agriculture,  and 
try  to  plant  the  seeds  so  that  more  of  them  will  germinate 
than  under  the  natural  regime. 

For  the  purposes  of  this  evening,  then,  we  consider  human 
selection — that  is,  selection  as  it  affects  human  beings — to  be 
made  up  of  three  elements.  First,  natural  selection  in  a 
very  narrow  sense,  meaning  by  this  the  selection  that  results 
Irom  the  operations  of  the  blind  forces  of  Nature — from 
winds  and  floods  and  droughts,  from  cold  and  heat  and 
earthquakes,  and  from  all  pestilences  having  their  origin 
in  causes  beyond  human  control.  Secondly,  there  is  what 
may  be  called  instinctive  selection,  by  which  I  mean  that 
selection  which  results  incidentally  from  the  instincts  of 
man  or  from  his  purposeful  acts  wnich  are  not  designed  to 
influence  selection.  As  examples  of  this  we  may  take  the 
extermination  of  a  tribe  in  which  the  combative  instincts  of 
the  individuals  are  so  stroug  that  they  can  not  co-operate 
for  mutual  defense,  or  the  death  without  surviving  issue  of 
the  debauchee  and  the  prostitute,  or  the  extinction  by  pesti- 
lence of  the  instinctively  dirty  and  unclean,  or  the  tendency 
to  survive  and  multiply  of , sober  and  thrifty  people  like  the 
Friends.  Thirdly,  there  is  an  element  in  human  selection 
which  we  may  call  rational  selection.  We  have  an  example 
of  this  when  the  State  enacts  laws  against  murder  and  sup- 
presses private  war ;  when  it  drains  a  malarial  swamp  or 
provides  for  sanitary  inspection  in  order  to  lower  the  death 
rate  ;  when  it  forbids  child  labor  and  endeavors  to  prevent 
the  unhealthful  employment  of  women ;  when  the  com- 
munity guarantees  the  destitute  from  starvation  or  death 
from  exposure  ;  whenever,  in  short,  any  action  is  taken  for 
the  set  purpose  of  affecting  the  death  rate  or  the  birth  rate, 
or  for  promoting  the  public  health. 

COMPAEISOIT   OF  NaTUEAL,  INSTINCTIVE,  AND  RATIONAL 

Selection. 

Natural  selection,  using  the  term  in  the  narrow  sense 
above  indicated,  is  perfectly  ruthless  and  fearfully  wasteful. 
Instinctive  selection  is  a  step  toward  something  better,  some- 
thing more  economical  of  time  and  energy  and  life ;  but 
the  advance  is  still  made  blindly  with  many  halts  and  retro- 
gressions and  excursions  into  no  thoroughfares.  The  excess- 
ive development  of  the  sexual  instinct  which  at  one  time 
is  necessary  to  the  survival  and  development  of  the  race, 


258  Evolution  of  Charities. 

may  at  another  destroy  the  welfare  of  the  race  which  it 
once  promoted.  The  instinct  of  the  fighter,  at  one  time 
necessary  to  preserve  its  owner  in  the  rude  struggles  of  the 
time,  may  at  another  get  its  owner  hung  for  murder.  The 
instinctive  impulse  to  aid  the  destitute  and  to  keep  the  poor 
from  starving,  which  results  in  more  economical  evolution 
at  one  time,  may  at  another  be  the  agent  which  wastef  ully 
prolongs  the  existence  of  those  who  are  unfit  from  the  stand- 
point of  race  improvement. 

Eational  selection  at  the  first,  and  at  its  poorest,  is  only  a 
shade  better  than  instinctive  selection.  Indeed,  in  cases  of 
definite  blundering  it  may  have  worse  results  than  instinc- 
tive selection.  Indeed,  it  is  hard  to  tell  in  any  given  case 
how  far  we  should  allow  our  reason  to  dominate  our  im- 
pulses. But  it  is  manifest  that  rational  selection,  at  its 
best,  and  in  its  possibilities,  is  the  superior  of  the  other  two 
forms,  and  those  races  will  eventually  survive  which  practice 
it  most  constantly  and  most  wisely. 

In  so  far  as  the  impulse  to  aid  one's  fellow-men  has  here- 
tofore affected  human  selection,  it  has  formed  a  part  of  in- 
stinctive rather  than  of  rational  selection.  Pity  for  the 
helpless,  the  diseased,  and  the  destitute  did  not  originate  in 
the  reasoning  faculties  any  more  than  did  maternal  love. 
Indeed,  it  might  have  seemed  that  a  people  that  charged  it- 
self with  the  task  of  supporting  the  weaklings  would  have 
been  fatally  handicapped  ;  that  it  was  irrational  to  assist  in- 
capables  to  survive ;  and  we  frequently  hear  it  urged  to-day 
that  the  giving  of  relief  promotes  the  survival  of  the  unfit. 
But  experience  has  indicated  that  those  communities  and 
peoples  that  have  developed  largely  the  charitable  instinct, 
properly  so  called,  have  been  the  ones  that  survived.  In 
the  many  instances  that  might  be  cited  where  the  depend- 
ent classes  have  become  so  numerous  as  to  drag  down  the 
community,  a  closer  examination  will  show  that  the  altruis- 
tic impulse  had  degenerated  or  been  counterfeited,  and  we 
do  not  recall  any  race  that  is  even  reported  to  have  become 
extinct  through  the  excess  of  genuine  brotherly  love. 

Utility  of  the  Charitable  Impulse. 

The  survival  of  those  peoples  that  have  the  altruistic 
sentiment  strongly  developed  is  perhaps  a  sufficient  answer, 
from  the  evolutionary  standpoint,  to  those  who  object  to  all 
philanthropic  undertakings  as  mischievous  meddling  with 


,         Evolution  of  Charities.  259 

the  benign  course  of  Nature ;  and  yet,  perhaps,  it  is  worth 
while  to  introduce  a  parenthesis,  in  answer  to  the  questions, 
"Why  not  be  brutal  ?  Why  not  chloroform  diseased  babies 
and  aged  paupers  ?  Why  not  shoot  down  the  Indians  and 
drown  the  inmates  of  our  insane  asylums?  Perhaps  for  the 
purposes  of  this  parenthesis  these  questions  sufficiently 
answer  themselves  if  we  add  to  them  the  question,  What 
would  be  the  effect  of  such  a  course  upon  the  state  of  feel- 
ing existing  between  employer  and  employed,  between 
debtor  and  creditor,  and  between  all  the  myriad  atoms  that 
make  up  modern  society?  Do  we  not  know  instinctively 
that  a  return  to  barbarism  in  this  way  would  return  us  to 
barbarism  in  other  ways  ?  The  question.  Why  not  be  brutal  ? 
has  further  been  answered  by  anticipation  :  Because  it  is  not 
economical.  And,  finally,  if  we  are  asked  why  the  vicious 
and  the  profligate,  the  dirty  and  the  diseased,  can  not  be 
allowed  to  exterminate  themselves,  run  their  course  and 
perish,  we  can  answer  that  gangrene  will  not  do  the  work  of 
caustic.  Social  cancers  infect  a  larger  portion  of  the  body 
politic  than  they  eat  away. 

Influence  of  Religious  Sanctions  on  the 
Charitable  Impulse. 

Whatever  begot  the  charitable  impulse  in  the  first  place, 
it  survived  because  it  was  useful ;  and  any  impulse  or  habit 
that  is  for  the  good  of  the  race  is  likely,  in  the  course  of 
time,  to  be  fixed  and  its  practice  insured  by  religious  sanc- 
tion.- Almost  all  customs,  including  the  organization  of  the 
Government  and  of  the  family,  and  even  habits  of  cleanli- 
ness and  diet,  have  been  thus  confirmed.  For  present  pur- 
poses we  need  not  bother  ourselves  with  teleological  con- 
siderations, nor  inquire  whether  the  religious  sanctions  begot 
the  useful  habits  de  novo,  or  whether  the  useful  habits  origi- 
nated through  spontaneous  variation,  and  were  then  seized 
upon  and  perpetuated  by  the  religious  instinct. 

To  whatever  source  we  may  trace  the  sentiment  of  pity 
and  the  desire  to  relieve  the  destitute,  this,  at  least,  is  sure 
that  it  had  not  been  in  existence  long  before  it  was  re-en- 
forced by  religious  sanctions.  In  the  language  of  the  Ven- 
didad,  as  quoted  by  Mr.  Crooker:  "The  riches  of  the  in- 
finite God  will  be  bestowed  upon  him  who  relieves  the  poor." 
Or,  according  to  a  Hindu  epic,  "  He  who  giveth  without 
stint  food  to  a  fatigued  wayfarer,  never  seen  before,  obtain- 


260  Evolution  of  Charities. 

eth  merit  that  is  great."  In  China,  long  before  the  Chris- 
tian era,  and  in  some  sort  with  religious  encouragement  and 
guidance,  there  were  refuges  for  aged  and  sick  poor,  free 
schools  for  poor  children,  free  eating-houses  for  wearied 
laborers,  associations  for  the  distribution  of  second-hand 
clothing,  and  societies  for  paying  the  expenses  of  marriage 
and  burial  among  the  poor.* 

But  religious  sanctions  sometimes  deteriorate  the  very 
impulse  that  they  are  supposed  to  strengthen.  When  the 
religious  re-enforcement  of  a  charitable  impulse  has  been  the 
desire  to  do  the  will  of  the  Heavenly  Father,  wishing  only 
good  to  his  children,  it  has  not  only  strengthened  the  altru- 
istic impulse,  but  has  uplifted  and  ennobled  it.  When,  on 
the  other  hand,  it  has  been  a  mere  desire  to  escape  hell  and 
enter  heaven,  or  to  propitiate  a  more  or  less  unreasonable 
deity,  we  have  had  the  acts  of  charity  without  the  motive,  the 
letter  that  killeth  without  the  spirit  that  giveth  life.  The 
grim  threat  of  the  Talmud — "  The  house  that  does  not  open 
to  the  poor  shall  open  to  the  physician  " — is  typical  of  many 
passages  that  might  be  quoted  from  the  older  religious  writ- 
ings. Under  the  influence  of  such  threats  or  of  more  direct 
ones,  many  a  man  has  felt  constrained  to  aid  the  poor  for 
purely  selfish  reasons ;  to  do  some  overt  act  that  he  thought 
prescribed,  in  order  that  it  might  be  accounted  to  him  for 
righteousness.  We  all  know  how  the  teachings  of  the  New 
Testament  were  so  distorted  by  the  mediasval  Church  that 
princely  gifts  to  the  poor  were  made  for  the  selfish  purpose 
of  benefiting  the  giver's  soul,  and  with  entire  disregard  of 
the  results  upon  the  recipients  of  relief.  Indeed,  so  purely 
selfish,  and  even  commercial,  were  the  reasons  which  led  the 
people  of  the  middle  ages  to  give  to  the  poor,  that  one  person, 
whom  Prof.  Huxley  has  quoted,  spoke  of  such  gifts  as 
"  merely  a  species  of  fire  insurance." 

Almsgiving  No  Charity;   Failure  of  the  Church 
AS  AN  Almoner. 

We  shall  find,  as  we  review  the  various  forms  of  the  chari- 
table impulse,  that  the  objective  effects  almost  invariably 
deteriorate  in  consequence  of  a  deterioration  of  the  subjec- 
tive motive.    When  almsdeed  takes  the  place  of  charity,  the 

•  See  Crooker,  Problems  in  American  Society,  p.  51.  I  am  indebted  to  Mr. 
Crooker  for  any  symptoms  of  erudition  that  may  appear  in  this  part  of  the 
lecture. 


Evolution  of  Charities.  261 

poor  are  not  helped,  but  merely  fed  and  clothed,  and  too 
frequently  degraded.  Further  than  this,  however  valuable 
religion  may  be  as  a  motive  power  urging  people  to  chari- 
table deeds,  the  ecclesiastical  organization,  the  Church,  as 
an  administrator  of  relief  funds  on  a  large  scale,  has  seldom 
been  a  success.  The  work  of  the  Church  and  of  religious 
people  has  been  most  successful  as  an  initiator  of  charitable 
undertakings.  New  classes  of  sufferers  have  been  sought 
out  and  helped ;  new  methods  of  helping  them  have  been 
invented  and  applied ;  but  when  the  community  had  been 
educated  up  to  the  point  where  it  saw  that  a  large  chari- 
table work  needed  doing,  and  when  the  methods  of  doing 
this  work  had  been  quite  thoroughly  elaborated  and  reduced 
to  a  routine,  the  usefulness  of  the  Church  organization  as 
the  community's  almoner  has  been  pretty  well  at  an  end. 
Specialists  in  spiritual  matters  do  not  appear  to  be  the  best 
administratoi;^  of  material  relief.  This  comes  only  in  part 
from  the  deterioration  of  the  charitable  impulse  already 
referred  to,  and  only  in  part  from  the  worldliness  which 
creeps  into  a  wealthy  church  organization.  It  comes  very 
largely  from  the  tendency  of  ecclesiastical  almoners  to  for- 
get the  material  effects  of  their  work,  through  concentration 
of  their  thoughts  upon  things  spiritual.  In  our  modern 
churches  there  is  very  little  of  the  selfish  element  which  in- 
duces the  church  members  to  give  for  the  sake  of  their  own 
souls,  but  there  is  too  much  ot  the  giving  which  serves  only 
as  a  bait  to  bring  the  unrepentant  within  the  spiritual  reach 
of  a  particular  denomination.  The  "  fire-insurance  "  ele- 
ment has  disappeared,  but  the  element  of  interdenomina- 
tional competition  takes  its  place.  Material  relief  is  scat- 
tered about  as  a  farmer  scatters  corn  about  his  feet  when  he 
wishes  to  bring  the  chickens  about  him  in  order  to  catch 
some  of  them.  So  blind  are  many  of  the  workers  to  the 
effect  upon  the  poor  of  this  sort  of  relief-giving,  that  a 
charity  organizationist  in  a  large  American  city  once  told 
me  that  the  relief-giving  female  missionary  was  the  bane  of 
his  life. 

The  State  as  Almoner. 

So  common  has  been  the  failure  of  the  Church  to  be  a 
good  almoner  when  administering  large  funds,  that  in  most 
countries  the  heaviest  part  of  the  burden  of  relieving  the 
poor  has  been  transferred  to  the  state.  In  England  the 
Church  was  deprived  of  her  almonership  at  the  time  of  the 


263  Evolution  of  Charities. 

Eef  ormation ;  in  France,  only  at  the  close  of  the  last  cen- 
tury ;  and  in  Italy  the  great  charitable  endowments  adminis- 
tered by  the  Church  have  been  secularized  only  within  the 
last  few  years.  But  so  complete  has  this  change  actually 
been  that  a  recent  volume  by  Hubert- Valleroux,  urging  that 
the  public  authorities  in  France  should  loosen  their  hold 
upon  the  relief  funds  now  administered  in  that  country  by 
the  Bureaux  de  Bienfaisance,  and  that  the  Church  should 
again  become  the  community's  largest  almoner,  is  a  reaction- 
ary plea  to  which  no  one  seems  likely  to  give  heed.  And 
yet  this  author  is  right  when  he  claims  that  the  charities  of 
France  were  largely  begotten  and  developed  by  the  Church. 
It  is  mainly  through  church  influence  that  the  community 
has  been  educated  up  to  a  point  where  it  insists  that  this 
large  mass  of  relief  work  shall  be  done.  None  the  less,  it  is 
proper  that  after  individuals  and  the  Church  have  experi- 
mented and  found  out  what  needs  doing,  the  doing  of  it 
should  often  be  intrusted  to  the  state. 

This  tendency  from  ecclesiastical  to  state  administration 
of  relief -giving  was  confirmed  at  the  close  of  the  last  cen- 
tury, when  the  religious  dogma  of  the  brotherhood  of  man 
was  paralleled  by  the  political  dogma  of  the  equality  of  men. 
Among  the  rights  which  the  revolutionary  governments  of 
France  held  to  be  inherent  in  the  individual  was  the  right 
to  labor  and  the  right  to  be  saved  from  starvation.  The 
"passion  for  humanity"  not  only  led  to  the  extravagant 
guarantees  given  by  the  revolutionary  governments  of 
France,  but  indirectly  it  encouraged  the  lavish  giving  of 
outdoor  relief,  which  proved  such  a  curse  in  England. 
This  lavish  giving  of  public  outdoor  relief,  which  has  been 
repeatedly  cited  as  an  example  of  the  limitless  power  for 
harm  inherent  in  the  state,  resulted,  as  Chalmers  pointed 
out,  in  taking  money  from  the  thrifty  by  taxation  and  giv- 
ing it  to  the  thriftless  in  the  name  of  charity.  It  was  al- 
tered greatly  for  the  better  by  the  Poor  Law  reform  of 
1834.  In  the  modifications  of  political  philosophy  that 
have  come  about  since  1848,  the  justification  of  public 
poor-relief  has  been  much  changed.  It  is  now  oftenest 
justified  on  the  grounds  of  expediency,  and,  curiously 
enough,  those  countries  which  theoretically  give  relief  as  a 
right  which  the  individual  may  demand  do  not  differ 
greatly  in  the  practical  administration  of  the  poor  law 
from  those  which  give  relief  as  a  favor  and  as  a  matter  of 
expediency. 


Evolution  of  Charities.  263 

Influence  of  the  Laissez-faire  Doctkike. 

But  "  equality "  was  not  the  first  word  in  the  political 
creed  of  the  revolutionary  epoch  from  1776  to  1848.  The 
first  word  was  "  liberty,"  and  while  the  passion  for  human- 
ity, acting  on  political  theories,  tended  greatly  to  extend 
puijlic  relief,  at  the  same  time  the  passion  for  liberty,  oper- 
ating through  economic  theory,  begot  the  doctrine  of 
laissez  faire,  and  tended  to  limit  public  relief  work  or 
to  abolish  it  altogether.  Really,  though  not  avowedly,  the 
economists  put  the  emphasis  on  "liberty,"  and  the  poli- 
ticians the  emphasis  on  "  equality,"  and  in  both  cases  the 
emphasis  was  rather  too  strong.  The  economists  rendered 
invaluable  aid  in  the  reform  of  the  poor  laws,  but  the  fact 
that  they  several  times  said  "  Don't "  to  good  purpose  em- 
boldened them  to  say  it  sometimes  when  they  had  much 
better  have  said  "  Do."  Napoleon's  maxim, "  Open  the  way 
for  talent,"  is  an  excellent  maxim  for  those  who  have  talent, 
but  how  about  those  who  have  it  not  ?  While  the  former 
press  on  to  thq  opening  made  for  them,  it  is  likely  that  the 
latter  will  be  crushed.  "  "Whoso  in  the  press,"  said  Carlyle, 
"  is  trodden  down,  has  only  to  lie  there  and  be  trampled 
broad,"  and  this  was  his  way  of  formulating  the  conclusion 
which  he  thought  he  found  in  some  poor-law  commission 
reports  that  had  been  written  by  economists.  The  school 
of  political  economy  of  Cobden  and  John  Bright — the  Man- 
chester School,  as  the  Germans  call  it — implied  in  their 
teaching  that  philanthropy  was  only  a  mischievous  tinker- 
ing with  matters  much  better  left  to  themselves. 

But  utilitarianism  was  triumphant  on  the  side  of  both 
political  and  economic  theory,  and  practice  was  brought  to 
conform  with  the  new  philosoph)^.  People  were  no  longer 
lavishly  given  relief  simply  because  abstract  reasoning  indi- 
cated that  they  had  a  "  right "  to  it,  and,  on  the  other  hand, 
the  community  never  consented  to  let  the  destitute  suffer 
and  die,  simply  because  the  "  dismal  science  "  indicated  that 
that  was  the  proper  thing  to  do.  The  relief  work  of  the 
Church,  the  state,  and  the  individual  has  been  brought  to 
the  base  of  expediency,  and  neither  theological  nor  philo- 
sophical considerations  are  sufficient  to  compel  the  contin- 
ued doing  of  that  which  experience  indicates  to  be  unwise. 

It  has  already  been  indicated,  in  a  general  way,  that  be- 
tween the  time  of  the  Reformation  and  the  present  a  very 
large  amount  of  relief  work  has  been  undertaken  by  the 


264  Evolution  of  Charities. 

state.  In  New  York  State  alone — the  Empire  State  of  a 
country  that  was  once  thought  to  be  quarantined  against 
pauperism  by  the  Declaration  of  Independence — considerably 
more  than  one  million  dollars  per  month  is  paid  out  from 
the  public  treasury  for  charitable  institutions.  But  are 
public  charities  charities  at  all?  Mrs.  Lowell,  you  know, 
has  called  her  work  Public  Belief  and  Private  Charity, 
indicating  a  distinction.  When  a  special  committee  of  the 
Legislature  of  Pennsylvania  was  investigating  the  expendi- 
tures for  charities  in  that  State,  the  committee  took  the 
ground  that  an  institution  supported  from  the  proceeds  of 
taxation  was  not  a  charity  at  all.  The  Indiana  State  Board 
of  Charities,  on  the  other  hand,  say  that  it  is  proper  to  call 
a  public  institution  for  the  relief  of  the  poor  a  charitable 
institution,  since  it  is  sympathy  for  the  poor  that  induces 
the  legislators  to  vote  the  money ;  and  it  is  sympathy  for 
the  poor  that  induces  their  constituents  to  uphold  them  in 
so  doing.  It  would  surely  be  unwise  to  quarrel  with  a  pop- 
ular nomenclature  for  the  sake  of  a  fine  distinction  which 
after  all  may  not  be  justifiable. 

DiFFEREKTIATION    OF   EDUCATIONAL    FEOM   ChAEITABLB 

Institutioks. 

Historically  we  find,  as  already  indicated,  that  what  the 
state  is  now  doing  was  formerly  done  by  the  Church,  or  by 
private  associations,  or  by  individuals.  When  the  work  be- 
came large,  and  it  was  certain  the  community  demanded  the 
doing  of  it,  and  the  methods  of  doing  it  had  been  well  de- 
veloped, then  it  was  unloaded  upon  the  state,  and  the  state 
still  bears  the  load.  But  there  has  been  a  tendency  for  some 
of  the  enterprises  which*started  as  charities  to  cease  to  be 
classed  as  such  after  the  state  has  had  control  of  them  for  a 
considerable  time.  I  refer  especially  to  educational  institu- 
tions. These  were  formerly  considered  charities,  and  in  law 
an  incorporated  school  or  university  is  still  classed  as  an  elee- 
mosynary corporation.  The  charities  commission  which 
investigated  the  endowed  charities  of  England  found  some 
of  its  hardest  work  not  in  reforming  and  revising  the  insti- 
tutions for  the  giving  of  material  relief,  but  in  the  grammar 
schools  and  other  educational  enterprises  supported  by  en- 
dowments. The  free  schools  of  England  were  long  spoken 
of  as  "  charity  schools,"  but  in  this  country  we  would  no 
longer  think  of  so  classifying  them. 


Evolution  of  Charities.  265 

Lying  between  what  we  now  call  educational  institutions 
and  what  we  now  call  charitable  institutions  are  the  estab- 
lishments for  the  education  of  the  defective  classes,  as  the 
blind,  the  deaf  and  dumb,  and  the  feeble-minded.  It  is 
within  the  memory  of  men  still  living  that  such  institutions 
as  these  were  supported  almost  entirely  by  private  contribu- 
tions and  classed  by  their  promoters  as  charities.  Yet  now 
they  resent  such  a  classification  and  wish  to  be  considered 
purely  educational.  While  this  development  has  been  going 
on,  the  character  of  their  support  has  also  changed  and  they 
are  now,  for  the  most  part,  maintained  at  public  expense. 
As  regards  the  feeble-minded,  the  development  is  behind 
that  of  the  other  two  classes  of  defectives  mentioned,  and  in 
the  work  of  caring  for  inebriates  public  enterprise  has  as 
yet  done  almost  nothing.  Whether  or  not  other  groups  of 
institutions,  now  classed  as  charitable,  shall  eventually  come 
to  be  classed  otherwise  can  not  be  definitely  foreseen ;  but 
my  own  impression  is  that  there  is  an  important  practical 
and  theoretical  distinction  between  the  giving  of  material 
relief — such  as  food,  shelter,  and  clothing — and  the  giving 
merely  of  instruction  and  opportunities  for  self-develop- 
ment. There  is  in  the  former  class  of  undertakings  a 
possibility  of  degrading  the  recipient,  which  is  almost  en- 
tirely absent  in  the  second  class ;  and  it  seems  likely  that 
the  "taint  of  charity,"  whatever  that  may  be,  will  always 
cling  to  the  giving  of  material  relief.    ■ 

Evils  and  Advantages  of  State  Administration; 
The  Subsidy  Question. 

The  state  has  been  an  unsatisfactory  almoner  in  some 
ways.  The  element  of  brotherly  love  is  at  a  minimum  in 
relief  work  when  it  is  done  by  public  officials.  Sometimes 
the  blight  of  partisan  politics  falls  upon  the  charities  of  the 
city,  or  the  county,  or  the  State,  as  it  did  in  the  old  days  of 
outdoor  relief  in  i3rooklyn ;  as  it  has  in  Marion  County,  In- 
diana, where  the  volume  of  outdoor  relief  varies  with  the 
intensity  of  election  excitement ;  as  it  has  in  Nebraska  and 
many  other  States,  where  positions  in  the  insane  asylums 
and  other  institutions  are  part  of  the  political  spoils.  But 
in  the  main,  where  the  work  to  be  done  is  large,  the  state 
is  the  most  reliable  almoner  that  we  have ;  at  the  same  time 
it  should  be  said  that  the  large  measure  of  administrative 
awkwardness  which  has  fallen  to  the  lot  of  American  local 


266  Evolution  of  Charities. 

government  makes  it  undesirable  that  the  state  should  un- 
dertake work  which  can  not  be  done  in  a  routine  manner 
and  according  to  pretty  thoroughly  generalized  rules.  For 
this  reason  outdoor  relief  in  American  cities  and  counties 
has  usually  been  a  source  of  degradation  to  the  poor  and  of 
corruption  to  local  politics. 

The  advantages  of  public  relief  work  are  that  an  income 
adequate  to  all  that  needs  doing  can  be  depended  upon,  and 
that  under  a  just  system  of  taxation  all  are  compelled  to 
contribute  according  to  their  ability.  The  advantages  of 
private  charitable  organization  are  great  economy  of  admin- 
istration, more  personal  and  sympathetic  interest  in  the 
beneficiaries,  and  a  greater  measure  of  inventiveness  and 
adaptability  of  means  to  ends.  It  has  therefore  been  fre- 
quently attempted  to  unite  the  advantages  of  public  and 
private  charities  by  the  giving  of  subsidies  from  the  public 
funds  to  the  private  charitable  institutions.  Few,  perhaps, 
know  how  far  this  tendency  has  gone.  In  New  York  city 
alone  nearly  two  million  dollars  per  year  is  paid  into  the 
treasuries  of  private  charitable  institutions.  In  New  York 
State  a  single  private  institution  receives  over  two  hundred 
thousand  dollars  per  annum  in  the  form  of  such  subsidies. 
The  objections  to  this  hybrid  form  of  organization  are,  that 
by  disguising  pauperism  it  promotes  it,  as  in  the  case  of  the 
fourteen  thousand  dependent  children  in  New  York  city ; 
second,  that  it  leads  to  the  needless  duplicating  of  institu- 
tions, as  where  in  Maryland  there  are  two  sets  of  juvenile 
reformatories — one  administered  by  the  Catholics  and  the 
other  by  the  Protestants ;  third,  that  it  does  not  take  the 
charities  out  of  politics,  but  merely  transfers  their  represent- 
atives from  the  executive  offices  to  the  legislative  lobby; 
and  fourth,  that  it  tends  to  dry  up  the  sources  of  private 
benevolence.  As  illustrating  this  last  point,  it  may  be  no- 
ticed that  as  public  contributions  to  institutions  for  the 
education  of  the  deaf,  dumb,  and  blind  have  increased,  pri- 
vate contributions  have  fallen  off.  Private  donors  do  not 
like  to  have  their  mites  hidden  by  the  large  contributions 
from  the  public  treasury,  and  turn  their  attention  to  chari- 
ties that  do  not  receive  state  support.  In  the  District  of 
Columbia  I  have  studied  this  matter  with  care,  and  it  is 
almost  uniformly  true  that  as  public  support  has  increased 
private  contributions  have  fallen  off,  and  in  many  cases  they 
have  finally  ceased  altogether.  The  subsidy  system,  as  a 
transition  from  private  support  to  public  support,  may  some- 


Evolution  of  Charities.  267 

times  be  advisable,  but,  wherever  practiced,  the  state  should 
have  some  effective  means  of  supervising  the  institutions  it 
subsidizes,  and  should  have  absolute  control  over  the  admis- 
sion and  the  discharge  of  the  inmates  whom  it  supports. 

Public  and  Private  Eelief  Work  in  the  United 

States. 

At  the  present  time  the  state  ia  responsible  for  the  great 
mass  of  relief  work  in  the  United  States.  In  its  almshouse 
it  provides  for  all  classes  not  otherwise  provided  for,  and  es- 
pecially for  the  aged  and  infirm  poor.  In  relief  of  the  sick 
it  usually  provides  free  hospitals  in  the  large  cities,  but 
where  endowments  have  accumulated,  as  in  Philadelphia, 
the  larger  part  of  this  work  is  done  by  private  institutions. 
Either  directly  or  through  subsidized  institutions,  it  pro- 
vides for  the  care  and  training  of  dependent  children ;  it 
provides  for  the  education,  with  free  board  and  lodging,  of 
the  defective  classes ;  in  its  asylums  or  hospitals  it  provides 
for  the  ever-increasing  number  of  the  insane ;  to  a  happily 
increasing  extent  it  provides  education  and  custodial  care 
for  the  feeble-minded ;  and,  finally,  in  some  cities,  as  Bos- 
ton, and  recently  in  Washington,  there  is  public  provision 
for  the  homeless  poor.  The  state  having  undertaken  all 
these  forms  of  charitable  work,  what  now  remains  for  pri- 
vate benevolence  to  do  ?  The  same  work  that  has  always 
fallen  to  the  lot  of  private  benevolence — that,  namely,  of 
invention,  experimentation,  progress.  Private  benevolence 
showed  what  was  possible  in  the  way  of  friendly  inns  and 
wood-yards,  and  now  that  branch  of  work  is  about  ripe  for 
transfer  to  the  public  authorities.  It  has  shown  and  is 
showing  what  can  be  done  in  the  way  of  free  kindergartens 
for  the  children  of  the  poor,  and  that  work  is  being  trans- 
ferred to  the  educational  department  of  the  local  govern- 
ments ;  it  is  showing  in  New  York,  Baltimore,  and  else- 
where what  can  be  done  in  the  promotion  of  thrift  through 
dime  saving  institutions,  and  that  work  we  hope  will  even- 
tually be  transferred  to  a  postal  saving  department  of  the 
Federal  Government.  Private  benevolence  has  shown  and 
is  showing,  in  the  great  children's  aid  societies  of  the  coun- 
try, the  advantages  to  be  derived  from  boarding  children  in 
private  homes  instead  of  herding  them  in  great  institutions ; 
and  this  lesson  has  also  been  learned  by  progressive  public 
autlftrities  in  Michigan,  Minnesota,  the  District  of  Colum- 


268  Evolution  of  Charities.  ' 

bia,  and  elsewhere.  There  also  remains  for  private  benevo- 
lence a  very  considerable  amount  of  work  which  the  public 
authorities  can  not  properly  undertake.  At  present  private 
benevolence  should  do  all  that  is  done  in  the  way  of  out- 
door relief.  It  is  conceivable  that  if  we  improve  in  the  ad- 
ministrative branches  of  our  Government,  a  time  may  come 
when  the  work  of  relieving  the  poor  in  their  homes  can  be 
undertaken  by  public  officials ;  but  such  a  time  is  yet  far 
distant.  However  this  may  be,  there  will  always  remain  for 
private  undertakings  the  relief  work  which  must  necessa- 
rily be  re-enforced  by  religious  exhortation  and  spiritual  up- 
lift. The  Salvation  Army  can  do  much  that  no  public 
authority  can  ever  undertake,  and  there  will  always  be  relief 
work  which  can  best  be  done  by  the  minister  and  the  mis- 
sionary. Finally,  there  remains  for  private  benevolence  the 
work  of  seeing  that  public  authorities  do  their  duty ;  and, 
most  important  of  all,  the  work  of  organizing  and  co-ordi- 
nating all  the  charitable  agencies  of  our  cities,  counties,  and 
States.  The  former  is  especially  the  duty  of  the  State 
Charities  Aid  Association,  and  the  latter  of  the  Charity  Or- 
ganization Society. 

Ethical  Aspects  of  the  QuESTioi>r. 

In  the  outline  of  this  lecture,  which  was  prepared  before 
the  man  who  was  to  give  the  lecture  had  been  chosen,  the 
heading  is  inserted  "  The  Effect  of  Indiscriminate  Charity 
on  Character."  I  ask  to  be  excused  from  treating  that  sub- 
ject. It  is  easy  to  talk  upon  the  subject  of  philanthropy 
as  a  failure,  and  I  have  myself  discussed  that  subject  many 
times  and  at  length ;  but,  as  a  student  of  political  economy, 
I  hold  it  to  be  my  duty  to  say  very  little  about  it.  Econo- 
mists have  harped  enough  on  that  string  already.  From 
Walter  Bagehot,  who  said  that  it  was  doubtful  whether  or 
not  the  efforts  of  philanthropists  to  relieve  their  fellow-men 
had  not  resulted  in  more  harm  than  good,  to  the  last  college 
sophomore,  who  has  written  an  essay  on  Pauperism,  they  all 
know  how  to  insist  upon  the  dangers  of  relief  work.  At 
present  and  to  this  audience  it  seems  a  more  helpful  thing 
to  shadow  forth,  however  dimly,  the  place  of  charitable 
work  in  evolutionary  economy,  and  to  show  that  we  are  not 
obliged  to  look  upon  all  the  works  of  philanthropy  as  a 
gratuitous  blunder. 

The  charitable  impulse  persists  because  in  the  long  run  it 


Evolution  of  Charities.  269 

is  useful  to  the  race  that  possesses  it.  It  has  a  distinct 
value  in  so  modifying  environment  as  to  save  from  needless 
extermination  all  who  are  in  any  wise  fit  from  the  stand- 
point of  race  improvement.  It  is  useful  in  that  it  mini- 
mizes suffering,  lengthens  life,  and  economizes  energy.  In 
the  complex  conditions  of  modern  life  self-sacrifice  must 
manifest  itself  and  do  its  work  through  modern  machinery. 
It  must  take  into  its  service  all  the  implements  of  scientific 
research  and  school  itself  to  be  wise  as  well  as  sympathetic. 
With  the  same  care  and  for  the  same  reasons  that  it  would 
give  shelter  to  neglected  and  abandoned  children,  it  must 
see  to  it  that  it  does  not  encourage  parents  to  neglect  and 
abandon  their  children ;  with  the  same  care  and  for  the 
same  reasons  that  it  would  feed  a  hungry  man,  it  must  see 
to  it  that  that  man  works  for  what  he  gets  ;  with  the  same 
care  and  for  the  same  reasons  that  it  assists  and  helps  a 
woman  who  has  been  abused  and  abandoned  by  her  husband, 
it  must,  if  possible,  punish  the  man  who  has  abused  and 
abandoned  her ;  with  the  same  care  and  for  the  same  reasons 
that  it  would  insure  a  feeble-minded  woman  against  star- 
vation, it  must  insure  that  same  woman  against  the  possi- 
bility of  having  offspring.  Charity,  as  has  been  well  said, 
must  no  longer  be  a  means  of  securing  merit,  but  a  method 
of  helpfulness. 

At  one  time  it  was  supposed  that  self-seeking  was  invari- 
ably and  inevitably  bad,  but  the  early  economists  "  changed 
all  that "  and  taught  that  enlightened  self-interest  was  the 
salvation  of  industrial  society.  Bastiat,  the  rhetorician  of 
economists,  almost  takes  our  breath  away  as  he  describes 
the  "  economic  harmonies  "  latent  in  enlightened  selfish- 
ness. That  which  produced  so  many  evils,  the  economists 
declared,  was  only  a  very  short-sighted  species  of  selfish- 
ness. Now,  if  enlightened  self-interest  is  a  good  thing, 
which  it  is,  enlightened  self-sacrifice  is  a  better  thing.  One 
instinct,  as  well  as  the  other,  may  be  blind  and  so  harmful, 
but  one  instinct,  as  well  as  the  other,  is  capable  of  enlight- 
enment ;  one,  as  well  as  the  other,  may  be  rationalized. 

Your  lectures  this  winter  have  dealt  with  "  The  Factors 
in  American  Civilization."  Among  such  factors,  enlight- 
ened self-sacrifice  must  find  a  place  if  America  is  to  be  loyal 
to  the  "  high  calling  wherewith  she  is  called  "  ;  if,  as  thou- 
sands have  fondly  hoped,  she  is  to  prove  herself  to  be  that 
nation  which  at  last  shall  "  serve  as  model  for  the  mighty 
world,  and  be  the  fair  beginning  of  a  time." 


370  Evolution  of  Charities. 


ABSTRACT  OF  THE  DISCUSSION. 

Miss  M.  E.  Richmond,  Secretary  of  the  Charity  Organization  Society, 

Baltimore,  Md. : 

Some  time  ago  I  had  occasion  to  attend  a  meeting  called  for  the 
purpose  of  organizing  reformatory  work  among  homeless  young 
women.  Two  protests  were  made,  I  remember,  against  the  plan  of 
work  as  there  explained.  One  good  lady  complained  that  it  was  nar- 
row to  limit  the  organization  to  one  purpose ;  that  so  much  good  work 
could  be  done  for  worthy  old  couples  too.  Another  objected  that  the 
children  were  neglected — nothing  appealed  to  her  heart  so  much  as 
the  cry  of  little  children.  Inspired  by  these  examples,  a  third  person 
present  moved  that  we  bind  ourselves  to  nothing  definite ;  that  we  re- 
main (though  she  did  not  so  word  it)  in  a  state  "  of  relatively  indefi- 
nite, incoherent  homogeneity."  When  I  wrote  to  an  olficer  of  your 
association,  Mr.  Skilton,  soon  after  about  the  evolution  of  charitable 
methods,  and  he  replied  with  great  frankness  that  the  nora-evolution  of 
charities  had  attracted  his  attention  for  a  long  time,  I  thought  that 
possibly  he  too  had  attended  recently  a  meeting  for  the  organization 
of  reformatory  work. 

Perhaps,  to  one  who  is  in  the  field,  the  minor  obstacles  and  discour- 
agements assume  undue  importance,  and  such  a  one  should  express 
her  gratitude  first  of  all  to  Prof.  Warner  for  the  larger  view  which 
gives  charity  its  rightful  place  in  the  evolution  of  life  on  our  planet. 
It  is  my  purpose,  however,  to  dwell  on  some  of  the  discouragements, 
hoping  we  may  find  an  indication  here  of  the  path  which  progress 
must  follow. 

Taking  the  more  objective  of  these  first,  the  daily  press  of  our  large 
cities,  with  some  notable  exceptions,  is  the  enemy  of  charitable  prog- 
ress. It  parades  the  needs  of  our  poorer  neighbors  in  grossly  exagger- 
ated descriptions,  it  advertises  the  poverty  of  particular  families,  with 
name,  street,  and  number,  in  local  items,  where  the  policeman  and  the 
newspaper  reporter  figure  as  guardian  angels ;  and,  worse  still,  it  fos- 
ters that  vanity  which  delights  in  the  cheap,  local  notoriety  of  a  chari- 
table leader. 

Another  and  most  discouraging  element  in  modern  charity  is  the 
gross  materialism  of  the  charitable — a  materialism  which  pins  its  faith 
to  charitable  cash  and  charitable  bricks  and  mortar,  a  materialism 
which  thrives  too  often  in  our  churches,  and  finds  its  expression,  on 


Evolution  of  Charities.  271 

cold  days,  in  loaves  of  bread  sent  for  distribution  to  police  headquar- 
ters, or  in  free  soup  for  the  idle.  Still  another  discouragement,  and 
the  natural  corollary  of  this  materialism,  is  the  wasteful  expenditure 
for  charity  in  our  large  cities.  In  Baltimore,  which  is  not  the  most 
wealthy  city  of  its  size  in  the  East,  we  spend  a  million  and  a  third  of 
dollars  yearly  in  running  the  public  and  private  charities  of  the  city, 
and  this  takes  no  account  of  individual  benefactions,  which  certainly 
amount  to  a  third  of  a  million  more.  Those  who  know  the  work  of 
these  charities  most  intimately  feel  that  only  a  very  small  part  of  this 
money  is  spent  in  making  our  people  permanently  better,  and  there- 
fore happier. 

The  tendency  of  charities  to  revert  to  a  lower  type  should  be  noted. 
The  wave  of  reform  which  reached  our  country  from  Elberfeld  during 
the  forties  and  resulted  here  in  associations  for  the  improvement  of 
the  condition  of  the  poor,  purposing  to  teach  habits  of  thrift  and  self- 
help  and  to  discourage  beggary,  subsided  again  to  leave  us  with  a 
number  of  relief  agencies,  many  of  them  still  engaged  in  no  better 
work  than  the  distribution  of  coal  and  groceries.  The  history  of  these 
associations  reminds  me  of  the  career  of  that  "  missing  link,"  the  as- 
cidian,  who  gave  promise  at  one  time  of  a  backbone,  but  reverted  later 
into  a  mere  stomach. 

It  has  been  said  that  the  most  liberal  of  us  are  superstitious  in  spots. 
A  physician  would  discover  your  medical  superstitions,  and  it  is  but 
natural  that  I  should  find  myself  wondering  how  many  charitable 
superstitions  are  still  yours.  The  power  over  us  of  outworn  charitable 
traditions  is  so  great  that  nothing  but  a  perpetual  readjustment  to  the 
best  knowledge  and  experience  of  our  time  can  save  us  from  fatal  fal- 
lacies. Take  an  illustration  from  Boston,  of  whose  philanthropic 
progress  we  are  accustomed  to  speak  with  awe.  The  mayor  of  that  city 
appointed  a  special  committee  of  men  and  women  to  examine  and  re- 
port upon  the  condition  of  its  public  charitable  institutions.  Last 
year,  in  their  final  report,  the  committee  summed  up  many  pages  of 
admirable  and  most  practical  suggestions  with  the  statement  that  pre- 
vention and  cure  appear  to  form  no  part  of  the  policy  of  the  adminis- 
tration ;  that  there  seems  to  be  "  no  policy  except  that  of  feeding  and 
housing  cheaply,  and,  on  the  whole,  humanely,  all  who  come,"  A 
critic,  commenting  upon  this  report,  remarks:  "Remedial  charity  is 
in  everybody's  theory  but  in  no  one's  practice."  I  am  not  prepared  to 
agree  with  him,  but  it  is  quite  certain  that  we  are  all  of  us  supplied 
with  a  larger  body  of  doctrine  on  this  subject  than  we  have  ever  used. 

Is  the  situation  quite  hopeless,  then  I  By  no  manner  of  means.  I 
take  the  report  of  this  Boston  committee  as  a  most  hopeful  sign  of  the 
times.     When  men  and  women  are  willing  to  spend  months  in  the 


272  Evolution  of  Charities. 

careful  examination  and  tabulation  of  facts  for  no  possible  personal 
gain  and  with  the  certainty  of  giving  much  necessary  offense,  when 
they  consent  to  become  intimately  acquainted  with  the  most  disgust- 
ing conditions  and  their  loathsome  causes,  and  when  this  knowledge 
is  informed  by  a  spirit  of  enlightened  helpfulness,  the  battle  is  not  lost. 
A  new  spirit  is  abroad — the  spirit  which  Dr.  Warner  calls  enlightened 
self-sacrifice.  It  demands  a  thorough  acquaintance  with  the  facts  in 
their  totality,  and  an  appreciation  of  what  others  have  done  and  are 
doing  in  any  given  charity  work.  In  sharp  contrast  to  the  old  school, 
it  insists  upon  the  same  standard  of  manly  and  womanly  independence 
for  every  human  soul,  and  seeks  to  develop  habits  of  self-help  by  wise 
giving  and  by  wise  withholding. 

This  new  spirit  came  to  us  with  a  second  wave  of  charitable  re- 
form, which  was  first  felt  in  1878  from  the  work  of  Edward  Denison 
and  Octavia  Hill  in  England.  This  wave  has  not  subsided  and  left 
us  in  the  state  of  the  ascidian — its  force  is  developing,  through  what  is 
known  as  the  charity  organization  movement,  a  well-defined  vertebral 
column. 

Over  eighty  cities  and  towns  in  the  United  States  have  organized 
charity  organization  societies ;  but  it  would  be  unfair  to  leave  the  im- 
pression that  the  spirit  of  the  new  charity  has  been  confined  within 
these  bodies.  On  the  contrary,  it  has  leavened  the  whole  charitable 
lump.  Orphan  asylums  are  being  replaced  by  technical  schools ;  un- 
wieldy institutions  by  cottages,  and,  in  the  case  of  children,  by  care- 
fully selected  homes  in  the  country ;  Dorcas  societies,  where  the  ladies 
of  the  parish  met  to  do  some  sewing  for  a  remote  and  shadowy  class 
known  as  "  the  deserving  poor,"  have  given  place  to  sewing  schools 
and  industrial  workrooms;  and  educational  philanthropy  is  every- 
where on  the  increase. 

In  searching  about  for  some  logical  progression  in  the  history  of 
charities,  it  has  occurred  to  me  that  a  hint  of  the  possibilities  as  yet  un- 
developed in  the  race's  charitable  instinct  may  be  found  in  the  growth 
of  that  more  highly  developed  but,  as  I  believe,  parallel  instinct — 
maternal  love.  Most  permanent  now  of  all  human  ties,  it  is  hard  to 
realize  that,  in  the  early  communities,  mother  and  child  held  this  rela- 
tion to  each  other  during  the  period  of  infancy  only :  that  motherhood 
ceased  when  physical  helplessness  was  at  an  end.  Mr.  Fiske  has 
shown,  in  his  able  chapter  on  moral  genesis,  how  the  maternal  instinct 
grew  with  the  growing  faculties  of  man  and  with  the  increasing  need 
of  ante-natal  education ;  the  more  complex  the  needs  of  the  child, 
the  deeper  the  mother's  love. 

Trace  the  history  of  mother  love  through  the  ages,  and  you  can 
not  fail  to  find  many  interesting  analogies  to  the  history  of  charitable 


Evolution  of  Charities.  273 

development.  If,  in  the  lack  of  permanence  in  our  charitable  relations, 
we  are  forced  to  compare  ourselves  to  the  gregarious  communities  of 
barbarism,  the  comparison  may  give  us  an  enlightening  glimpse  of  our 
unrealized  possibilities.  If,  in  artificial  states  of  society,  we  find  the 
mother  relegating  her  mother's  privileges  and  duties  to  hirelings,  it 
will  not  be  impossible  to  discover  those  in  our  own  day  who  are  will- 
ing to  pay  others  to  discharge  their  charitable  duties.  If  the  mother 
instinct,  unenlightened  and  uncontrolled,  has  hindered  race  develop- 
ment at  times,  so  too  have  we  petted  and  coddled  into  helplessness 
those  we  would  have  helped. 

But  for  mother  love  as  we  know  it  at  its  best— that  primal  passion 
so  elevated  and  transformed  by  self-sacrifice,  so  keenly  alive  to  the 
threefold  responsibility  of  motherhood,  so  conscious  that  from  the 
plastic  lump  of  flesh  is  demanded  a  symmetrical  development  of  body, 
mind,  and  soul— for  such  love  we  have  no  parallel  in  charity.  Such 
love  must  be  our  teacher.  When  we  have  failed  in  efforts  to  help 
our  fellow-man,  is  it  not  because  we  were  blind  to  the  claims  of 
his  threefold  nature!  Is  it  not  because  the  woe  of  impecuniousness 
or  of  physical  suffering  appealed  more  to  our  sluggish  imaginations 
than  the  mental  and  moral  lacks  behind  them  I  When  we  know  about 
and  care  intensely  for  the  whole  man,  when  no  sort  of  giving  will  con- 
tent us  which  fails  to  carry  with  it  our  time,  our  thought,  ourselves— 
then,  indeed,  may  we  feel  that  the  charitable  instinct  has  become  a 
powerful  factor  in  civilization. 

Prof.  Robert  Foster  : 

Those  who  have  watched  carefully  the  evolution  of  charities,  as  I 
have  done  for  the  past  forty  years,  must  have  noted  certain  features 
as  awakening  interest,  inspiring  hope,  and  accomplishing  the  best  re- 
sults.   Among  the  features  referred  to  are  these : 

1.  The  decrease  of  indiscriminate  almsgiving. 

2.  The  use  of  scientific  methods,  with  love  as  the  impelling  motive. 

3.  The  substitution  of  remunerative  employment  for  the  dole  of 
alms. 

4.  The  divorce  of  institutional  charity  from  politics. 

5.  Improved  dwellings  for  the  poor,  in  which  real  and  pure  home 
life  is  possible. 

6.  The  establishment  of  benevx)lent  agencies  which  are  or  are  likely 
to  become  self-supporting. 

All  these  principles  have  been  adopted  to  a  considerable  extent,  and 
all  are  essential  to  large  progress  in  right  directions.  There  are,  it  is 
true,  many  persons  who  dissent  from  this ;  some  who  are  reformers  on 
one  line,  who  insist  that  all  effort  and  energy  should  be  concentrated 


274  Evolution  of  Charities. 

on  the  work  of  shutting  up  the  dram  shops,  for  example,  or  on  the 
care  of  neglected  childhood.  These,  surely,  are  important ;  are,  like 
the  others,  indeed,  essential ;  but  no  one  is  sufficient  in  itself,  no  one 
is  the  single  panacea  for  the  ills  of  poverty ;  no  one  can  do  more  than 
a  part  of  the  work  of  redeeming  Brooklyn  or  New  York  city  from 
the  want  and  woe  and  wickedness  which,  alas!  so  largely  abound 
there. 

In  the  time  allotted  I  can  only  dwell  on  one  or  two  of  those  features 
indicated  as  prominent  in  the  evolution  of  charities.  The  decrease  of 
the  pernicious  custom  of  indiscriminate  almsgiving  is  more  and  more 
manifest,  and  we  rejoice  in  it  chiefly  because  the  deserving  poor  are 
greatly  the  gainers  thereby.  The  greatest  curse  possible  in  any  com- 
munity is  the  bestowal  of  alms  without  previous  inquiry.  The  con- 
sciousness of  this  has  led  gradually  but  surely  to  the  adoption  of 
scientific  methods  in  charity.  Especially  during  the  past  decade  there 
has  been  a  persistent  endeavor  to  bring  the  teachings  of  science  to 
bear  practically  on  this  great  subject,  and,  without  suppressing  the 
sentiment  of  charity  in  the  individual  soul,  to  accomplish  the  greatest 
good  to  the  greatest  number  through  organization — through  wisely 
directed  institutional  activities;  to  do  this  in  obedience  to  the  dic- 
tates of  common  sense  and  yet  without  sacrificing  that  spirit  of  human 
sympathy  which  Paul  exalts  above  faith  and  hope,  and  which  Henry 
Drummond  rightly  styles  "  the  greatest  thing  in  the  world."  That 
noble  society,  the  Bureau  of  Charities,  in  this  city,  is  the  finest  illus- 
tration known  to  me  of  the  wisdom  of  focusing  the  earnest  sentiment 
and  sympathy  of  the  community,  and  without  check  directing  their 
flood  into  common-sense  channels.  I  am  deeply  impressed  with  the 
value  of  the  work  done  by  this  bureau,  and  I  am  amazed  to  learn  from 
time  to  time  that  they  lack  the  funds  needed  to  carry  out  the  plans 
they  so  wisely  project.  Would  that  more  of  the  surplus  wealth  of  this 
rich  city  might  find  its  way  into  their  treasury.  There  is  one  other 
local  institution  with  the  operations  of  which  I  am  thoroughly  conver- 
sant, and  I  think  no  one  will  gainsay  the  affirmation  that  it  is  doing 
its  share,  and  a  very  large  share,  toward  solving  the  problem  of  the 
poor.  During  the  past  week  there  were  taken  from  the  free  library  of 
the  Union  for  Christian  Work  an  average  of  more  than  six  hundred 
books  to  be  read  in  the  homes  of  the  people.  During  almost  every 
week  employment,  in  many  cases  permanent,  is  provided  for  at  least 
seventy  persons.  The  Union  is  unique  in  its  policy,  which  is  strictly 
adhered  to :  No  money  is  paid  out  to  its  beneficiaries,  ftnd  no  money  is 
received  from  them.  This  Free  Labor  Bureau  of  the  Union,  probably 
the  largest  of  its  kind  in  the  world,  has  for  its  motto  and  motive  this 
proposition :  To  promote  self-help  is  to  help  the  most  effectually. 


Evolution  of  Charities,  275 

Mr.  Bolton  Hall  : 

I  think  it  may  be  shown  that  in  many  cases,  instead  of  saving  reck- 
less waste,  charity  has  increased  it.  Charity  is  a  palliative  designed 
to  sustain  the  status  quo  in  our  social  institutions.  On  account  of 
charity  men  are  induced  to  endure  the  conditions  in  which  they  find 
themselves.  The  time  is  past  when  charity  was  a  kind  of  fire  insur- 
ance against  the  contingencies  of  the  future  life,  because  we  have 
ceased  to  believe  in  the  fire.  But  it  is  now  an  insurance  of  another 
kind — an  insurance  against  social  tornadoes.  But  for  charity,  men 
would  long  ago  have  swept  away  the  whole  order  of  things  as  it  now 
exists.  What  would  be  the  effect  upon  the  people  of  Brooklyn  if,  on 
some  such  morning  as  we  have  had  of  late,  fifty  people  should  be  found 
frozen  to  death  f  The  public  mind  would  be  immeasurably  shocked ; 
yet  many  of  the  poor  of  this  great  city  go  where  they  had  better  be 
frozen  to  death.  Our  police  lodging-houses  save  the  body  but  destroy 
the  soul.  Here  is  an  entire  field  that  charity  now  occupies  which 
ought  to  be  left  vacant.  It  attracts  to  the  cities  a  large  number  who, 
if  left  in  the  country,  would  support  themselves  well.  They  come  to 
the  city  assured  that  if  they  find  nothing  to  do  there  are  at  least  plenty 
of  places  to  "  turn  in."  The  best  way  to  relieve  this  kind  of  distress  is 
to  do  nothing.  We  have  made  no  progress  in  the  relief  of  poverty  for 
eighteen  hundred  years.  We  have  not  fewer  poor  people ;  we  have  not 
less  distress.  The  charity  organizations  have  done  one  good  thing : 
they  have  collected  statistics  and  discredited  the  old  claim  that  the 
cause  of  poverty  is  drunkenness.  It  is  the  other  way :  the  cause  of 
drunkenness  is  poverty.  They  have  also  shown  conclusively  that  the 
cause  of  poverty  is  not  laziness.  Forty  per  cent  of  those  who  apply  for 
assistance  need  no  help  but  the  opportunity  to  work.  When  the  Pil- 
grim fathers  came  to  this  country  they  had  nothing  and  found 
nothing— but  land.  As  long  as  men  can  get  the  land  there  is  no  lack 
of  work.  But  we  allow  individuals  to  monopolize  the  land :  this  is 
the  cause  of  poverty— and  charity.  What  are  we  going  to  do  about  it  t 
Divide  the  land  anew  f  That  would  do  no  good.  The  sensible  and 
natural  course  is  where  anybody  has  a  monopoly  of  any  kind  let  him 
pay  to  the  rest  of  the  community  a  reasonable  value ;  as  in  law,  when 
property  is  divided  among  heirs,  if  one  takes  all  the  land  he  pays  the 
others  who  have  none.  What  we  need  is  access  to  the  land.  Make  it 
unprofitable  to  hold  natural  opportunities  without  using  them.  Tax 
natural  monopolies  up  to  their  full  rental  value.  It  should  be  as  ab- 
surd for  a  man  to  be  "  out  of  work  "  as  out  of  air,  and  if  we  remove  the 
artificial  barriers  to  opportunity  it  will  become  so. 


276  .Evolutiaru  of  Charities. 

De.  Waenee,  in  reply : 

With  the  last  speaker  I  realize  the  lack  of  time  to  treat  the  subject 
adequately.  Voltaire  said :  "  The  way  to  be  stupid  is  to  say  every- 
thing." I  have  at  least,  I  hope,  avoided  that  accusation.  I  am  aware 
of  the  truth  of  Spencer's  dictum :  "  The  final  result  of  saving  people 
from  their  folly  is  to  fill  the  world  with  fools."  As  to  the  idea  that 
charity  will  not  be  necessary  if  we  have  a  proper  social  organization — 
that  giving  free  access  to  land  will  abolish  poverty  and  do  away  with 
the  problem  of  charity :  If  any  one  thinks  he  can  cure  the  complex 
disease  of  poverty  with  a  single  panacea  he  is  assuming  as  much  as 
that  all  bodily  diseases  can  be  cured  by  one  drug.  I  am  reminded  of  a 
man  on  the  street  corner  giving  a  lecture  on  physiology.  He  conveys  a 
good  deal  of  tolerably  accurate  information,  but  finally  traces  all  dis- 
eases to  one  organ,  holds  up  his  twenty-five-cent  bottle  of  stuff  to 
regulate  that  organ — and  there  you  are !  About  a  quarter  of  all  the 
poverty  in  our  society  originates  in  bodily  disease,  and  it  is  as  impos- 
sible to  obviate  that  poverty  as  the  bodily  disease  from  whence  it 
comes.  There  is  one  distinction  which  Mr.  George  makes  in  his  books 
which  he  could  never  have  made  if  he  had  ever  acted  as  a  "  friendly 
visitor."  It  is  as  absurd  to  speak  of  "  voluntary  poverty  "  as  of  volun- 
tary stomach-ache.  We  may  choose  to  do  things  that  give  us  the  pain, 
but  we  never  choose  the  pain.  Poverty  arises  not  from  one  thing,  but 
from  many'things.  One  who  has  lived  in  the  West,  where  access  to 
land  is  free,  must  know  that  a  great  deal  of  poverty  comes  from  dis- 
ease, is  caused  by  bad  habits,  etc.  Access  to  land  is  not  a  cure  for 
these  evils.  I  believe  private  property  in  land  is  based  on  expediency, 
and  has  been,  on  the  whole,  a  great  social  advantage.  If  by  having 
private  property  in  air  we  could  increase  the  amount  and  improve  the 
quality  of  air  for  the  people,  I  should  favor  that  also. 


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CONTENTS. 

35.  The  Natioii's  Place  in   Civiliztttion.     By  Charles  De  Garmo, 

Ph.  D.,  i'resident  of  Swarthmore  College. 

36.  Natural  Factors  in  American  Civilization.    By  Rev.  Johx  C. 

Kimball. 

37.  What  America  Owes  to  the  Old  World.    By  A.  Emersox  Palmer. 

38.  War  and  Progress.    By  Dr.  Lewis  G.  Janes. 

39.  Interstate  Commerce.    By  Robert  \V.  Tayler. 

40.  Foreign  Commerce.    By  Hon.  William  J.  Coombs. 

41.  nie  Social  and  Political  Status  of  Wome  i.     By  Rev.  John  W. 

Chadwick. 

42.  The  Economic  Position  of  Woman.     By  Miss  Caroline  B.  Le 

Row. 
48.     Evolution  of  Penal  3fethods  and  Institutions.     By  James  Mc- 
Keen. 

44.  Evolution  of  Charities  and  Charitable  Instilutions.     By  Prof. 

Amos  G.  Warner,  Ph.  D.,  Superintendent  of  Public  Charities, 
Washington,  D.  C. 

45.  The  Drink  Problem.    By  T.  D.  Crothers,  'SI.  D.,  Editor  of  the 

"  Quarterly  Journal  of  Inebriety." 

46.  The  Labor  Problem.     By  Rev.  Nicholas  P.  Gilman,  Editor  of 

the  "  Xew  World." 

47.  Political  A.'ipects  of  the  Labor  Problem.     By  J.  W.  Sullivan. 

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